CHICAGO 10, MINNESOTA 2 IN CHICAGO
Date: Friday, September 20.
Batting stars: Michael Cuddyer was 2-for-3 with a double. Corey Koskie was 1-for-3 with a home run, his twelfth. David Ortiz was 1-for-3 with a walk.
Pitching stars: Rick Reed pitched four innings, giving up one run on three hits and no walks and striking out two. LaTroy Hawkins pitched a scoreless inning, giving up a walk.
Opposition stars: Paul Konerko was 3-for-4. Carlos Lee was 2-for-3 with a home run (his twenty-fifth), scoring three times and driving in four. Dan Wright pitched eight innings, giving up two runs on five hits and a walk and striking out three.
The game: It looked good for a while. Koskie homered in the second inning to give the Twins a 1-0 lead. Jose Valentin homered in the fourth to tie it 1-1. The Twins had men on first and third with none out in the fifth but could only score once, on a David Lamb double play grounder, to make it 2-1. Then Reed left the game and the roof fell in. It fell slowly, but surely. The White Sox got a walk and three singles (two of them infield singles) in the bottom of the fifth to take a 3-2 lead. In the sixth, four consecutive singles and a sacrifice fly brought home three runs and made it 6-2. In the seventh, two walks and a single made it 7-2 and Lee hit a three-run homer to put the game out of reach. The Twins did not threaten after the fifth inning.
WP: Dan Wright (13-12). LP: Juan Rincon (0-2). S: None.
Notes: Michael Ryan made his major league debut in this game, batting leadoff and playing left field in place of Jacque Jones. He went 0-for-4.
Torii Hunter returned to the starting lineup, going 0-for-3.
Ortiz played first base in place of Doug Mientkiewicz. Mientkiewicz had not played since September 15, but would be back in the lineup in the next game.
Cuddyer was in right field.
Tom Prince caught, replacing A. J. Pierzynski. He went 1-for-3.
Lamb played second base in place of Luis Rivas. He went 0-for-3.
There is no apparent reason for Reed to have come out after four innings and forty-five pitches. One assumes he was simply being rested in a meaningless game near the end of a long season, with the playoffs coming up.
Rincon made his first appearance as a Twin since August 25. It did not go well, as he allowed five runs (four earned) on seven hits and a walk in 1.1 innings. He did not have the best luck, as four of the hits were infield singles.
Kevin Frederick made his first appearance as a Twin since August 6. It did not go well, either, as he allowed four runs on two hits and two walks in one inning.
Hawkins lowered his ERA to 2.21.
Record: The Twins were 89-64, in first place, leading Chicago by 12.5 games.